Self-disclosure of HIV infection: preliminary results from a sample of Hispanic men.

We examined self-disclosure of HIV infection among 101 seropositive Hispanic men residing in Los Angeles. Results indicated that disclosure was highly selective and presumably influenced by the social, psychological, and material consequences of informing others about one's medical condition. Subjects tended to inform significant others such as parents, friends, and lovers than less significant others such as employers, landlords, and religious leaders. There was a relatively high rate of disclosure (75%) to doctors/dentists who were not treating subjects for HIV infection. Gay and bisexual subjects (89% of the sample) were more inclined to disclose their HIV serostatus to homosexual or bisexual others than to heterosexuals and to inform those who were aware of their sexual orientation. Disclosure increased with severity of disease independently of length of time since testing seropositive. Self-rated negative changes in appearance correlated with disclosure to less significant others. The role of cultural attitudes and values in self-disclosure of HIV infection is discussed.     

A current approach to anticipation in sport / Un enfoque actual de la anticipación en el deporte

The classical cognitive concept of anticipation and timing (for example, reaction time) somewhat limits the study of sports actions under spatio-temporal pressure. The presence, duration and evolution of the information of the opponents, spatio-temporal pressure, the evolution of the athlete’s response movements or the degree of representativeness are some of the issues facilitating research into an anticipation that is better adjusted to the specific circumstances of interception tasks. This article proposes that temporalization of response actions is based on the balance between the spatio-temporal demands of the task, the athlete’s action capabilities and the evolution of the reliability of the available variables. In order to obtain good performance in these actions under pressure, individual perceptual differences and possible interactions with other information sources must also be considered.     

Developing a System for Processing Health Data of Children Using Digitalized Toys: Ethical and Privacy Concerns for the Internet of Things Paradigm

EDUCERE (Ubiquitous Detection Ecosystem to Care and Early Stimulation for Children with Developmental Disorders) is a government funded research and development project. EDUCERE objectives are to investigate, develop, and evaluate innovative solutions for society to detect changes in psychomotor development through the natural interaction of children with toys and everyday objects, and perform stimulation and early attention activities in real environments such as home and school. In the EDUCERE project, an ethical impact assessment is carried out linked to a minors’ data protection rights. Using a specific methodology, the project has achieved some promising results. These include use of a prototype of smart toys to detect development difficulties in children. In addition, privacy protection measures which take into account the security concerns of health data, have been proposed and applied. This latter security framework could be useful in other Internet of Things related projects. It consists of legal and technical measures. Special attention has been placed in the transformation of bulk data such as acceleration and jitter of toys into health data when patterns of atypical development are found. The article describes the different security profiles in which users are classified.     

Poststimulation time interval-dependent effects of motor cortex anodal tDCS on reaction-time task performance

Anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) induces long-term potentiation-like plasticity, which is associated with long-lasting effects on different cognitive, emotional, and motor performances. Specifically, tDCS applied over the motor cortex is considered to improve reaction time in simple and complex tasks. The timing of tDCS relative to task performance could determine the efficacy of tDCS to modulate performance. The aim of this study was to compare the effects of a single session of anodal tDCS (1.5 mA, for 15 min) applied over the left primary motor cortex (M1) versus sham stimulation on performance of a go/no-go simple reaction-time task carried out at three different time points after tDCS—namely, 0, 30, or 60 min after stimulation. Performance zero min after anodal tDCS was improved during the whole course of the task. Performance 30 min after anodal tDCS was improved only in the last block of the reaction-time task. Performance 60 min after anodal tDCS was not significantly different throughout the entire task. These findings suggest that the motor cortex excitability changes induced by tDCS can improve motor responses, and these effects critically depend on the time interval between stimulation and task performance.     

Motivational deficits in schizophrenia relate to abnormalities in cortical learning rate signals

Individuals from across the psychosis spectrum display impairments in reinforcement learning. In some individuals, these deficits may result from aberrations in reward prediction error (RPE) signaling, conveyed by dopaminergic projections to the ventral striatum (VS). However, there is mounting evidence that VS RPE signals are relatively intact in medicated people with schizophrenia (PSZ). We hypothesized that, in PSZ, reinforcement learning deficits often are not related to RPE signaling per se but rather their impact on learning and behavior (i.e., learning rate modulation), due to dysfunction in anterior cingulate and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC). Twenty-six PSZ and 23 healthy volunteers completed a probabilistic reinforcement learning paradigm with occasional, sudden, shifts in contingencies. Using computational modeling, we found evidence of an impairment in trial-wise learning rate modulation (α) in PSZ before and after a reinforcement contingency shift, expressed most in PSZ with more severe motivational deficits. In a subsample of 22 PSZ and 22 healthy volunteers, we found little evidence for between-group differences in VS RPE and dmPFC learning rate signals, as measured with fMRI. However, a follow-up psychophysiological interaction analysis revealed decreased dmPFC-VS connectivity concurrent with learning rate modulation, most prominently in individuals with the most severe motivational deficits. These findings point to an impairment in learning rate modulation in PSZ, leading to a reduced ability to adjust task behavior in response to unexpected outcomes. At the level of the brain, learning rate modulation deficits may be associated with decreased involvement of the dmPFC within a greater RL network.     

Depressive symptoms in Friedreich ataxiaSíntomas depresivos en la ataxia de Friedreich

Background/Objective: Almost no attention has been paid to depression in Friedreich ataxia (FRDA), a highly disabling cerebellar degenerative disease. Our aim was to study the presence and the profile of depressive symptoms in FRDA and their relationship with demographic-disease variables and cognitive processing speed. Method: The study groups consisted of 57 patients with a diagnosis of FRDA. The Beck Depression Inventory-II was used to assess symptoms of depression. Speed of information processing was measured with a Choice Reaction time task. Results: The mean BDI score for patients was significantly higher than the mean score in the general population. Twenty one percent of participants scored in the moderate/severe range. A Cognitive-Affective score and a Somatic-Motivational score was calculated for each patient. Patients’ scores in both dimensions were significantly higher than the scores in the general population. Demographic and disease variables were not related with symptoms of depression, except for severity of ataxia. Depressive symptoms predict cognitive reaction times. The greater proportion of variance was explained by the Cognitive-Affective dimension. Conclusions: Our data show that both somatic-motivational and cognitive affective symptoms of depression are frequent in individuals with FRDA. In addition, depressive symptoms may influence cognition, especially, the cognitive and affective symptoms.     

Acculturative stress in Latin-American immigrants: an assessment proposal

The aim of this paper was to develop an instrument to assess levels of stress experienced by Latin-American immigrants in their acculturative process in Spain. A sample of 692 immigrants from Latin America, aged 20 to 63 years, took part on this study (54.9% males and 45.1% females). A 24-item questionnaire with high reliability (.92) was elaborated. Six factors related to acculturative stress were found: 1) discrimination and rejection; 2) differences with the out-group (native Spaniards); 3) citizenship problems and legality; 4) problems concerning social relationships with other immigrants; 5) nostalgia and longing; and 6) family break-up. Our findings show that participants have a high level of stress related to nostalgia and longing, family break-up, and the perception of discrimination and rejection by natives. The usefulness of the instrument and its applications and restrictions are discussed.     

Animacy in the adjunction of Spanish RCs to complex NPs

The present paper focuses on the role of animacy in the processing of relative clauses (RCs) after complex NPs. We follow research by the Desmet et al. team on Dutch in exploring the role of animacy in Spanish RCs. We present data from a corpus study and two self-paced experiments and we compare the three studies and the Dutch and Spanish results. Our main objective is to fill important gaps in past research on the processing of adjunction ties in Spanish and to offer a more detailed exploration of grain effects in exposure-based accounts. In particular, we have sought both to analyse the match between corpus studies and online processing in Spanish much more closely than it has been until now and to see whether animacy could revert the well-established tendency of Spanish RCs to attach high inside the complex noun phrase.